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Review

The Sundial is Shirley Jackson's wickedly funny and deeply unsettling 1958 novel about a household of petty, grasping people who convince themselves they have been chosen to survive the end of the world. It begins, as all good Jackson novels do, with something terrible presented in the most matter-of-fact way imaginable: the family has just returned from the funeral of Lionel Halloran, pushed to his death down the main staircase by his own mother. Within pages, his widow is asking her ten-year-old daughter if she'd like to see Granny drop dead on the doorstep, and the daughter replies, obediently, "Yes, mother." The tone is set.

The Halloran estate is a monument to one man's vanity — a walled-off world of ornamental lakes, secret gardens, marble statues, and a sundial inscribed with the enigmatic question WHAT IS THIS WORLD? When Aunt Fanny, the patriarch's spinster daughter, receives a vision from her dead father warning that the world will be destroyed and only those inside the house will be saved, the household does not so much convert as find a new excuse for doing what they were already doing: clinging to privilege, scheming against one another, and refusing to leave. The prophecy becomes less a spiritual event than a power struggle. Mrs. Halloran, the imperious matriarch, believes not because she has faith but because she cannot tolerate being excluded from anything, even a new Eden. "I will not be left behind," she declares, "when creatures like Aunt Fanny and her brother are introduced into a new world."

Jackson's genius here is in the comedy. This is a novel in which the residents stockpile corncob pipes and citronella alongside shotguns, in which Aunt Fanny burns the library's ten thousand leather-bound volumes for fertiliser while insisting on keeping a Boy Scout Handbook, and in which the most earnest debate about humanity's future devolves into a catastrophic bridge game. The dialogue is lethally precise — every character reveals themselves with each sentence, and not one of them comes off well. Essex, the self-aware parasite who catalogues the library while spying on everyone, is perhaps the closest thing to a sympathetic figure, and even he knows he is "cringing, fetching and lying and spying and outraging." The conversations between Mrs. Willow, the magnificently vulgar houseguest, and the repressed household are among the funniest Jackson ever wrote.

Yet beneath the comedy runs something genuinely chilling. These people do not just believe in the apocalypse — they relish it. They are thrilled at the thought of everyone else dying while they survive. The farewell party thrown for the villagers on the eve of destruction is the novel's centrepiece — a bacchanalia of champagne and barbecue that reads as both a generous farewell and a grotesque last supper, hosted by people who fully believe their guests will be dead by morning. Miss Ogilvie's desperate, drunken attempt to warn the villagers, drowned out by music and laughter, is one of the most heartbreaking scenes Jackson ever wrote.

The novel is structured around enclosure and escalation. The estate's wall separates Halloran from not-Halloran; the house separates the saved from the damned; and finally, blankets nailed over every window separate the inhabitants from any evidence of what is actually happening outside. Jackson understands that fanaticism is less about what you believe than about who you exclude, and the Halloran estate — built by a man who wanted his house to "contain everything" — becomes the perfect image of a mind that mistakes its own boundaries for the borders of reality.

The ensemble of characters is drawn with surgical precision. Maryjane, the dim widow who cares only about her asthma and movie plots. Miss Ogilvie, the timid governess who finds the prophecy liberating because it is the first time anyone has told her she matters. Mrs. Willow, the earthy, shameless mother trying to marry off her daughters, who converts to the apocalypse with the same pragmatism she brings to everything else. And Fancy, the ten-year-old who is perhaps the most disturbing presence in the book — a child already perfectly adapted to a world of manipulation and inheritance, who asks when she can have her grandmother's crown with the same tone she uses to discuss her doll house.

The novel's structure is cyclical. It opens with a murder by staircase and closes with another. The sundial asks WHAT IS THIS WORLD? and receives no answer — only the wind. Jackson leaves us in the barricaded drawing room with these impossible people, and the question of whether the world actually ends is left deliberately unanswered. That ambiguity is not evasion but the point: the apocalypse has already happened, inside these people, and the new world — if it comes — will be inherited by the same vanity, cruelty, and self-deception that ruined the old one.

Reviewed 2026-03-26

Notable Quotes

Young Mrs. Halloran, looking after her mother-in-law, said without hope, 'Maybe she will drop dead on the doorstep. Fancy, dear, would you like to see Granny drop dead on the doorstep?' 'Yes, mother.'

Opening lines of the novel, immediately after Lionel's funeral, establishing the family's casual cruelty — family, cruelty, dark comedy, childhood

The path gets straighter and narrower all the time. The years press in. The path becomes a knife edge and I creep along, holding on even to that, the years closing in on either side and overhead.

Essex describing his wasted youth to Mrs. Halloran at dinner, his first night in the novel — mortality, existential dread, aging, self-awareness

Now I am thirty-two years old, and the path getting narrower all the time, and the chances of my dying of anything at all are one in one.

Essex's blackly comic monologue about mortality statistics, delivered at the dinner table — mortality, dark comedy, statistics, inevitability

WHAT IS THIS WORLD?

The inscription on the sundial, chosen by an unknown craftsman in Philadelphia, which becomes the novel's central question — meaning, existential questions, the unknown

Mrs. Halloran died there within three months, without ever having seen more of the sundial than the view from her bedroom window; she did not go to the center of the maze nor visit the secret garden... she died believing that snow was falling outside the window.

History of the first Mrs. Halloran, who never adapted to the grand estate built for her — isolation, wealth, displacement, death

'Did you marry me for my father's money?' 'Well, that, and the house.'

The second Mrs. Halloran (Orianna) answering her husband Richard with perfect candor about their marriage — marriage, greed, honesty, dark comedy

The essence of life is change, you will all, being intelligent people, agree. Our one recent change—I refer, of course, to the departure of Lionel—has been both refreshing and agreeable. We could very well do without Lionel.

Mrs. Halloran announcing her plans to dismiss the household dependents after her son's funeral — power, cruelty, euphemism, control

From the sky and from the ground and from the sea there is danger; tell them in the house. There will be black fire and red water and the earth turning and screaming; this will come.

The voice of Aunt Fanny's father delivering his apocalyptic prophecy near the sundial — apocalypse, prophecy, father figures, supernatural

Now I may go mad, but at least I look like a lady.

Aunt Fanny, lost and terrified in the secret garden, composing herself on a marble bench — propriety, class, terror, dark comedy

I have never had any doubt of my own immortality, but put it that never before have I had any open, clear-cut invitation to the Garden of Eden; Aunt Fanny has shown me a gate.

Mrs. Halloran explaining why she chooses to believe in Aunt Fanny's prophecy despite calling it 'claptrap' — belief, power, immortality, self-deception

When we believe, we must do so wholly. I am prepared to follow Aunt Fanny because I agree with you: it is the only positive statement about our futures we have ever heard, but once I have taken her side I will not be shaken. If I can bring myself to believe in Aunt Fanny's golden world, nothing else will ever do for me; I want it too badly.

Essex confessing to Mrs. Halloran that his belief in the prophecy is driven by desperate need rather than evidence — belief, desperation, faith, desire

Humanity, as an experiment, has failed.

Aunt Fanny announcing the divine verdict to Maryjane and Fancy, with the authority of the newly prophetic — apocalypse, humanity, judgment, prophecy

'Well, I'm sure I did the best I could,' Maryjane said.

Maryjane's magnificently self-absorbed response to being told humanity has failed as an experiment — self-absorption, dark comedy, obliviousness

Fancy is a liar. She had been with Aunt Fanny and dared not admit to running away. She had not been frightened, but she enjoyed teasing people weaker than herself. Not a servant, or an animal, or any child in the village near the house, would willingly go near her.

Jackson's narrator breaking in with a cold, direct assessment of the ten-year-old Fancy — childhood cruelty, deception, power, character

We are in a pocket of time, a tiny segment of time suddenly pinpointed by a celestial eye.

Aunt Fanny, emboldened by the prophecy, speaking with uncharacteristic authority to Mrs. Halloran — time, apocalypse, chosen people, transformation

One of the things I am going to miss is fancy food.

Miss Ogilvie, eating peach pie with chocolate ice cream at the village drug store, accidentally revealing the apocalypse to the soda fountain clerk — dark comedy, domesticity, apocalypse, innocence

We are not going to need it. Please try to understand, Captain—we are not going to need it any more.

Mrs. Halloran handing the captain an enormous check, explaining with terrible calm why she can afford such generosity — belief, money, apocalypse, conviction

I never took odds like that in my life. I know a lot about you by now, and if you're ready to put that kind of money on the line, I figure Harry goes along with you. I stay.

The captain refusing the fortune and choosing to remain, reasoning that anyone willing to give away that much money must know something — belief, gambling, conviction, money

I want to mate with you in a brave new world, all clean and shining, and yet I want to be your husband in this world, and live along in the kind of grimy squalor married people live in. I want a furnished room and jobs and dirty diapers in the corners and poor food.

Essex confessing his love to Gloria, torn between the promised paradise and the ordinary human life he has never had — love, domesticity, idealism vs reality, longing

They look like pigs and weasels and rats.

Fancy's observation of the villagers at the farewell party, sitting beside her grandmother on the terrace — contempt, class, childhood cruelty, dehumanization

Please let them come with us. You can't, you can't, you can't.

Miss Ogilvie's desperate plea to Mrs. Halloran to save the villagers, the novel's most genuinely compassionate moment — compassion, futility, moral conscience, helplessness

My dear dear dear friends, please listen to me, please please listen. You are going away from here tonight to a dreadful and terrible catastrophe and none of you will live unless you stay here with us, you will die; please please stay.

Miss Ogilvie addressing the departing villagers from the terrace in a desperate, drunken speech no one heeds — warning, futility, compassion, Cassandra

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Mrs. Willow's immediate, untroubled pronouncement upon finding Mrs. Halloran dead at the bottom of the stairs — justice, violence, cycles, dark comedy

My crown! When I am dead.

Fancy demanding Mrs. Halloran's crown; Mrs. Halloran's reply, spoken earlier, about when she would relinquish it — inheritance, power, death, childhood

The first thing I will do is make you a crown of flowers.

Essex's last line in the novel, a promise to Gloria as they wait out the final night in the barricaded drawing room — love, hope, new beginnings, beauty